


Cryotubes

by WithYouTillTheEndOfTheShield



Series: Stay Frosty [5]
Category: Alien Series, Aliens (1986)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:43:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3763432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WithYouTillTheEndOfTheShield/pseuds/WithYouTillTheEndOfTheShield





	Cryotubes

The bodies are in cryotubes, lined up against the back wall. Hudson nearly misses them – no-one’s moving, so they don’t show up on any of the detectors. It’s only thanks to Vasquez that any of them even see the chambers. She calls out to Hicks who’s at the back with Drake, and soon they’re all gathered in the room around them. Five cryotubes. Five lifeless forms.

Hicks shines his flashlight across them, looking at the dormant bodies, completely peaceful. The one at the end catches the light differently, something inside it refracts his flashlight beam, and he frowns, taking a closer look. Vasquez hears him swear from across the room.

“What?” She turns to him, just in time to see him dropping his gun and trying to pry the chamber open. “Hey, Hicks!”

“It’s filling with liquid,” he grunts, trying to shift the lock. “She’s drowning in here!”

Vasquez is over beside him in a second, casting her gun aside to help him lift the lid of the chamber and get her out. With Drake’s help they manage to pull it up, and then he and Hicks are scrambling to pull her out. She’s completely submerged when they get hold of her and lift her out of the freezing water. They lay her down, and Hicks checks for a pulse. By the time Apone gets in he’s performing CPR, and Vasquez is trying to tell him it’s not worth it. Apone snaps at Hicks that she’s dead and he should just put her back in the chamber, but Hicks ignores him, pinching her nose and tipping her head back, blowing air into her lungs in an attempt to reflate them.

Just one more go, he tells himself. If she doesn’t wake up and start breathing on her own after this breath of air he’ll stop. But again, he dips his head and breaths for her, going back to trying to stimulate her heart. One more time, he tells himself.

“Hicks, for fucks sake!” someone yells. “Pick up your fucking gun!”

He rocks back on his haunches, looking at her completely peaceful face. There are still tiny crystals of ice from where she was in her cryochamber, before it malfunctioned and the coolant melted back into liquid, drowning her. Then, he hears something. A stuttered breath. Her chest rises, just a little, and liquid spurts out of her mouth. She’s coughing, convulsing on the floor, and Hicks is trying to support her head, make sure she doesn’t hurt herself.

“Well I’ll be damned.” Apone murmurs from behind him, before calling to Deitrich to get down into the med labs of the facility they’re scoping.

He orders Hicks to get her into the med lab so she can be examined, and he loops his arms underneath her to pick her up. As he walks through the abandoned facility, he can feel her shivering in his arms, huddling up to the miniscule amount of heat that radiates from his body through his armour. When they reach the med lab he lays her down on the table, and she stares up at him with wide eyes, terrified. Deitrich steps in, all business and all bustle, and greets her with that loud, overbearing voice of hers. She orders the woman to sit up, and Hicks swears he sees those scared eyes flick to his face before she complies.

Deitrich runs the few necessary tests, before reporting back to Apone that the woman is fine, other than a little fluid in her lungs that can be cleared when they reach base again. The others are all gathered around the doorway, and Hudson’s trying to get in, to get a look at her. Hicks and Apone are the only two inside with her. She’s still shivering.

Hicks suggests some dry clothing for her, and Apone orders Vasquez, Drake and Frost to go out and search for something around the facility, before telling Hicks that they should leave her alone in a room to recover.

She tries to stand, but after god knows how long of being in cryo she’s weak, and the second she tries to support herself her legs give out, and with a tiny scream she crumples. Apone orders him to put her in the recovery room next door before leaving, putting the shutters down so no one else can see in and gawk.

Hicks reaches out to her with one hand, and she looks up at him silently with those innocent, nervous eyes that flicker around constantly. “It’s okay.” He says. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Eventually she takes his hand, and lets him drag her to her feet. She can’t stand on her own, let alone walk, so he carries her just like before, and lays her down on the cheap and crappy military-grade cot. He knows that they’re going to start asking questions, wanting answers from her, and he knows that the last thing she needs right now is an overload. He tells her she should get some rest, and then promises he’ll bring her clothes.

The light goes out, and he’s halfway down the corridor to get to communications when he sees Vasquez. She throws him a blue bodysuit – the kind an engineer would wear – and tells him it’s the best they could find. He thanks her and turns back to the room, turning on the light and apologising when she shifts in her bed. He’s disturbed her.

She doesn’t say anything, but her dark eyes follow him as he puts the folded clothes beside the bed. “Put these on. You’re soaked through.”

Struggling a little, she sits up and picks up the clothes. He half expects her to ask for privacy, motion for him to turn around, give her a little space. Instead, she strips out of her clothes and, with a little difficulty, pulls on the bodysuit. He turns around out of respect – the woman deserves to keep a little dignity after everything she’s been through – but she makes a little noise of frustration to get his attention. He spins back around, to see she’s struggling to coordinate herself enough to get all her limbs where they belong.

“You want a hand?”

She nods, and he instructs her to lie back on the bed. After a couple of minutes of struggling, pulling and manoeuvring, Hicks manages to get her inside the bodysuit. The rest of the bed is soaked now though, from contact with her wet clothes, so he hauls her out of it and over to a different cot, closer to the back, more secluded. If someone comes in they won’t see her straight away. She’ll be safe from any prying eyes.

“You good?” He asks, drawing the covers up to her chin and shooting her a small, (what he hopes is) comforting smile. She doesn’t fully return it, but the corner of her mouth does lift just a little in a show of exhausted gratitude.

“I’ll be right outside.” He promises, before turning to leave. He hears another little noise, something close to a word this time, but not quite there. He turns back to see she’s reaching out for him with one hand, her eyes wide again. “Something wrong?”

“Stay?”

It’s cracked, broken, barely above a whisper, but it’s a word, and it’s more than Deitrich or Apone got out of her during the examination. Hicks smiles, and nods. “Sure thing.”

He drags a chair up and sits beside the bed, but when she starts shivering again he ends up putting his gun to one side and crawling in next to her. He knows it’s not great – his armour blocks most heat from reaching her – but it’s better than nothing, and she soon falls asleep. Slowly, carefully so as not to rouse her, he slides out of the bed and picks up his gun, padding out of the room and sliding the door closed behind him. Vasquez is leaning against the wall in the corridor, waiting for him.

“You were in there a long time, Hicks.” She remarks coolly. He looks across to her sharply.

“Nice observation.”

“You got friendly with Sleeping Beauty in there?” She asks, one eyebrow raising. “I saw the way you looked at her when we pulled her out. You wanna _fuck_ her.”

“Speaking of fucking.” Hicks remarks coldly. “Where’s Drake?”

She huffs, brushes past him, disappears down the corridor. And he’s glad, because at least part of what she’d said was true. Hicks looks behind him to the recovery room he’s just come from and rubs the back of his neck, deciding to head for communications, see what the others are doing.

It turns out, when he gets down there, that the other cryo chambers have been shut down for years. Hers was the only one that remained operational, until it malfunctioned for no reason. All of her friends have been dead for years, but their corpses have been preserved in the chambers. No one can work out why.

It also turns out the base they’ve been ordered to siege, the one they’re sitting in, doesn’t actually have any information, anything of use. Apone orders them to get everything they’ve found so far and get back to the APC, head back to the _Sulaco_. He tells Hicks to go wake up ‘Sleeping Beauty’.

She’s still asleep when he comes in, and he feels guilty for waking her. She doesn’t seem to mind though, managing a bleary smile as she sits up on her own. She seems to be moving with more ease, but when he asks how she feels she shakes her head slowly.

“Can I get a name out of you?” He asks gently, crouching beside the bed and looking up at her. She stares down at him, for a few moments looking confused. Then she just looks horrified. “You remember it at all?”

She shakes her head again, unable to speak. After a moment’s thought, he places a hand on her knee. “It’s okay. Hey, when we get you back to base we can help you.”

After a moment’s hesitation she takes his other hand, the one he’s extending to her, and squeezes it gently, allowing him to guide her out of the room and back to communications, back to the others.

 

 

She’s nervous about going into cryo. It’s understandable, he admits. She spent god-knows how long in there before, and all the friends she was put into the tubes with died during their time in stasis. He couldn’t imagine being eager to get back into one of those things after that.

She’s dressed in a borrowed vest and underwear Vasquez passed over, and she’s stood beside him looking nervous as hell. Most of the others are in their tubes, programmed and ready to go. It’s only the two of them and Bishop left.

“You ready?” Hicks asks, and she swallows hard, eyes flickering over the tubes. He can see her concern. “You can take a minute if you want.”

She shakes her head, and slowly steps over to the tube. He helps her crawl into it, and Bishop begins tapping in the settings. As the machine begins to start up she grabs for his hand, and he squeezes it quickly, before telling her to keep her hands inside.

“I’ll be here when you wake up.” He promises as the lid closes. For a few seconds she stays conscious, and then her eyes begin to close, slowly at first, and then they fall completely shut.

He and Bishop stand over her for a few seconds, before the synthetic suggests he get into his own cryotube. He nods, and asks to be woken up before her so he can keep his promise, be there for her when they land. Bishop agrees, and after a couple more seconds Hicks gets into his own tube.

The lid closes over him, and everything goes dark. He begins to dream.


End file.
